ABSTRACT
The language arts of India comprised, till modern times, one of the few domains in which women could speak in their own voices when they could not on common public platforms. What was the ideal that allowed them to do so? In our examination of Hindu goddesses in Chapter 2, we noted how such figures – idealized representations of energy – have been translated through time into role models for Hindu women, and how in the process the ideals for women have shifted in focus from authority to conformity. But the discussion there also marked out one goddess who does not, for all her gentleness, fall into a dependency role. This is Sarasvat^, the goddess of learning and the arts, whose example hardly prepares women for the domestic roles of wife or mother enjoined upon women in Hindu society. On the contrary, she may be said to give women their voice because she validates speech, women’s as much as men’s. Even then it has not been easy for women in traditional Hindu society to pursue the arts of language for any but the most commonplace jobs of life, for speech can be liberating and always holds the potential for self-assertion and resistance. Such freedom could well be viewed with suspicion. It is not surprising, then, that until the adoption of liberal educational policies in India from the nineteenth century, women who sought learning were often considered neglectful of their womanly responsibility of looking after their families.1 But that is just why seeking Sarasvatī’s blessings might be regarded by women as a way to independence, if not always in practical life, at least in imagination’s domain. Whether this has ever been the actual reasoning behind women’s pursuit of learning and the arts cannot be determined, but it is historically evident that poetry has been a particularly effective medium for women in their struggle to voice their individual identities.
